Realism & Naturalism

Justyna Rapacz and Rachel VongvilayAP Literature and Composition

Period 14-15

1865-1914

Defining Realism/Naturalism

-Realism and Naturalism strive to portray things as they are -Present life as anyone might see it-Without idealization and emotional involvement

Grand Scheme of Things...

● Result of post-civil war (1861-1865)● Loss of hope when people exposed to brutal reality● Created a “down to earth” demand where literature

no longer idealized people or places● Time of healing and rebuilding

History; Civil War

● Inventions and new technology spurred factory work→ books, paintings about factory workers

● Urbanization: city life- new problems, new society● Mass production of goods, standardized changed old

traditions… no longer an agriculturally driven society● Urbanization: city life- new economic and social

problems → women working, rise of middle class, factory conditions

History; Industrial Revolution

● muckrakers: journalists and novelists who exposed corruption and captured reality

→ people were able to see their struggles in print● expressed social and philosophical concerned

caused by materialism and technology

History; Media

● August Comte (1798-1857): Father of Sociology → encouraged cause and effect of nature -Naturalism● Charles Darwin (1809-1882): Origin of Species (1859)

→ “survival of the fittest” -people controlled by heredity and environment● Karl Marx (1818): Marxism

→ equal distribution of money, against urbanization -social class

Philosophy

Get ready to take notes!

Tenet Time…

● Realism strives to represent a “slice of life”-Verisimilitude emphasis-Plausible events-Documented history to shed light on issues & concerns

shift: creativity → capture reality

Tenet #1

Upton Sinclair reveals the unsanitary and sickening practices in the meatpacking industry throughout The Jungle. “They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink—why, in the name of heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in jail and leave him outside—why could they find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?” (Sinclair).

Dunbar?

Connection

● First time literature focused on social class and its effect on individuals

-emergence of middle class & their aspirations-immigration-urbanization

shift: no class → emergence of middle class

Tenet #2

Sinclair showcases the lives of immigrants in America and their struggle to live in a society with an emphasis on social class.“...he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town, and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it” (Sinclair).

Dunbar?

Connection

● Literature explored new social conduct-relationships-materialism and greed-women and minorities/workplace

shift: traditional → more modern social views

Tenet #3

In The Jungle, it is shown that it wasn’t unusual for women to be working, but it was still more ideal for women to remain at home. “Jurgis was determined that Teta Elzbieta should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help her. He would not have Ona working – he was not that sort of a man, he said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing if a man like him could not support the family, with the help of the board of Jonas and Marija” (Sinclair).

Dunbar?

Connection

● Awareness of environment and concentration on heredity

-philosophical ideas about how they affect people and their passions-”survival of the fittest”

shift: religious views → science

Tenet #4

“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.”

Dunbar?

Charles Darwin

● Simple, honest diction is used-satirical, matter-of-fact tone-little elaboration-uses dialect, slang, & natural language

shift: exaggerated emotion → simple, less dramatized

Tenet #5

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, characters use dialect that are realistic in diction and grammar. Jim the slave is a less educated character who uses slang and improper grammar: “Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well, I know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it ag'in” (Twain 5).

Dunbar?

Connection

● Divergence from religion-rapid social shifts-sought truth, not religion

shift: Religious/Spiritual → Inner Spirituality

Tenet #6

Mark Twain satirizes religion and describes its values as nonbeneficial and unimportant: “Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness.…” (Twain 109).

Dunbar?

Connection

Now for our activity…

We will give two passages and you have to differentiate which one is realism writing and which one is not. You get a special surprise if you are able to guess the title of the Realism book!

Famous Authors & BOOKS!

1. “Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom."

2. “It tells us in a ringing anthem, like heavenly hosts uplifted,

That the rhapsody of the pastoral is out to lunch. We can take it from there.”

Correct: the second excerpt (“Realism”: Tom Clark)

Incorrect: the first excerpt (“Sonnet 116”: William Shakespeare)

Answers

"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more."...

"Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in."

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.

"Next we began to sail up the narrow strait lamenting. For on the one hand lay Scylla, and on the other mighty Charybdis in terrible wise sucked down the salt sea water. As often as she belched it forth, like a cauldron on a great fire she would seethe up through all her troubled deeps, and overhead the spray fell on the tops of either cliff.

Correct: first excerpt (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain)

Incorrect: second excerpt (The Odyssey: Homer)

Answers

1. My father calls the Dauntless “hellions.” They are pierced, tattooed, and black-

clothed. Their primary purpose is to guard the fence that surrounds our city.

From what, I don’t know. They should perplex me. I should wonder what

courage—which is the virtue they most value—has to do with a metal ring

through your nostril. Instead my eyes cling to them wherever they go.

2. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and

he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his

fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen,

the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could

scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb;

Correct: second excerpt (The Jungle: Upton Sinclair)

Incorrect: first excerpt (Divergent: Veronica Roth)

Answers

1. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark

Twain3. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser4. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy5. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor

Dostovyevsky

List of Books and Authors

-Class conflicts-Family-Marriage-Gender roles-Effects of urbanization

Common Themes

Art

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers (1849)

Honoré Daumier, The Legislative Belly (1834)

Vincent van Gogh, First Steps (1890)